


The Furie of Baker Street

by mydogwatson



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF Mrs. Hudson, Look At Your Life Look At Your Choices, Unhappy John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 17:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7583764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is confronted with some hard truths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Furie of Baker Street

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was a bit unexpected. I am supposed to be working on my new long story. But when I watched the trailer for season 4, this idea came to me and wouldn't leave me alone. It has nothing to do with season 4, actually, although the inspiration will be clear. Set, I suppose, just after season 3. But it satisfied me, so I hope it will you as well. Enjoy. And, as always, let me know what you think!

John Watson was always the first one into the surgery on Wednesdays. It was his job to get things organised for the day---pulling patient files, getting the kettle ready, sorting the mail, etc. Most days the receptionist did all of that, of course, but on Wednesdays she had her yoga class, so nice guy John Watson stepped up and volunteered.

In all honesty, he enjoyed being in the quiet space all on his own. Sometimes he spent far too much time just shuffling the out-dated magazines in the waiting room or sitting lost in his own head. He did occasionally wonder just what he was trying to escape by being there, but he never allowed that thought to linger for very long in his mind, because it was too dangerous a path to travel.

Everybody just thought it was nice of him, especially as he was still almost a newlywed, with a very pregnant wife; he let them think so.

On this particular Wednesday morning, he was whistling a rather mournful tune he didn’t even know the name of as he unlocked the door and walked into the waiting room. Maybe it was something Sherlock used to play on the violin at two in the morning. Well, he undoubtedly still played it. But no one was listening now.

Not that Sherlock probably cared very much.

Before he even flicked the switch to turn on the overhead light, John saw the silhouette of someone sitting in the room. The sight startled him into dropping his knapsack, probably squishing the sandwich he’d brought for lunch. An instant later, he recognised the figure and finally turned on the light.

“Mrs Hudson, good god, you gave me a start.”

“Did I?”

“Are you ill? How on earth did you get in here?”

“Never underestimate an old woman with a nail file,” she said. 

He gave a short laugh. “A skill no doubt taught to you by your somewhat shady lodger.”

John had expected her to smile at least a bit at that, but her face remained uncharacteristically stony.

He finally realised that there was definitely something bothering his former landlady. He picked up his bag setting it on the table and then sat down across from her. ‘What can I do for you, Mrs Hudson?”

She was clutching her second-best handbag so tightly that her knuckles were white. “You can explain yourself.”

He raised a brow.

She took a deep breath. “It has come to my attention, Dr Watson, just who it was that shot Sherlock.”

John could feel the colour drain from his face. “Did he--?”

Her look turned icy. “Is that what you think of him? Of course Sherlock didn’t tell me. He would never be so disloyal. I have sources of my own.”

There was a heavy silence between them.

“Well,” John said finally, “it’s complicated.”

“Pah, it is remarkably easy, John Watson. Your ‘wife’…” It sounded like an epithet, the way she said it. “…shot down Sherlock Holmes in cold blood and very nearly killed him. Then you, the man who is supposed to be his best friend, went back to her.”

“She’s my wife,” John said dully. “And there is a baby.”

Mrs Hudson seemed entirely unmoved by his domestic details.

“And Sherlock himself told me to go back,” John said, getting a bit defensively angry himself. “He practically wrote the words I said to her.”

Oddly, and just for a fleeting moment, she looked a bit less angry herself and a bit more sad. “Well, of course he did. He suspected that you would choose her eventually, because no one ever chooses him. Sherlock simply did not want you sleeping next to a woman who might decide at any moment to shoot you if she started to doubt your loyalty.”

“She wouldn’t,” John objected, although it was not exactly the first time that very thought had entered his mind.

Mrs Hudson gave a delicate snort that did nothing to hide the disdain she felt over those words. “Oh, yes, and I am sure Sherlock felt exactly the same way up until the very moment your wife put a bullet in his chest.”

John flinched.

“And then he kills a man, a monster really, and is almost sent to his death just so that you could keep your happy little family.”

John raised a hand to stop her. “Now wait. He was just going off on some mission for Mycroft, but he would have---”

She interrupted him. “Are you really the only one who didn’t know that it was a suicide mission? Mycroft knew that. Sherlock knew it. I am sure that Morstan knew it as well.”

John didn’t know for sure when the universe had started spiralling out of control. Was it when Sherlock ‘died’? Or when he returned? Possibly on the night when Mary nearly killed him for real?

Or maybe it all began on the day he’d walked into the lab at Barts and met Sherlock Holmes. He remembered that moment much better than he did the day he met Mary. Did that mean anything?

Did it all mean anything?

Without knowing that he was going to do it until the moment he did, John picked up several magazines and threw them at the wall. The noise from the impact echoed in the room.

Mrs Hudson just looked at him for a moment. “I forgave you, John, for abandoning me after Sherlock’s fall, although it felt like a very selfish action on your part. At the time, I could almost excuse it as the act of man destroyed by grief. But now I think that you are so caught up in your own wants and needs that there is no room for anyone else. Except for your wife, of course.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to be,” John replied sharply. “I married her.”

“Indeed you did,” Mrs Hudson said. There was another pause and then she stood, making a bit of a face at the obvious pain in her hip. No soothers this morning, then; she had wanted to be at the top of her game for their encounter. “Just a few more questions before I go. If you will indulge a former landlady.”

“What questions?”

She fixed him with a gaze that now burned with intensity. “If Sherlock had died with Morstan’s bullet in his chest would you still be sleeping with the woman who killed him? Would you sit across the breakfast table from her and talk about baby names? Would you just move on and pretend that once upon a time you knew a rather odd fellow named Sherlock Holmes, but that was only a part of your past? Would you make love to a woman with Sherlock’s blood staining her hands?”

She asked all her questions, but Mrs Hudson did not wait for any answers. Instead, she turned around and left the surgery, her short heels click-clacking in the silence.

John sat there alone.

He was still there when the receptionist came rushing in, full of thanks. Instead of going to his office and preparing for the first patient as usual, John finally stood, picking up his knapsack. “You know, Tanya,” he said pleasantly, “I’m not feeling very well this morning. Better not spread the germs. Would you please cancel what appointments you can and ask Dr Moore to take as many as he can of the others?”

She agreed so quickly that John decided he must look as bad as he felt. With a nod, he left the building, pausing on the pavement. He let the pedestrians flow around him unnoticed as he thought.

A right turn would take him to the tube station for his train back to the suburban flat where he was supposed to be living as a happy husband and father-to-be: Dr John Watson, respectable citizen.

Going to the left instead would take him to Baker Street, right back into the madness that was Sherlock Holmes and a life that defied all reason.

He only had one chance to make the choice that would decide his fate and this was the moment in which he had to choose.

Right or left?

Right or left.

**Author's Note:**

> Still jazzed by the trailer, by the way! Cannot wait for 2017.


End file.
